My guest today is Leyla Latypova, a journalist who works as a special correspondent for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. An ethnic Tatar from the republic of Bashkortostan, Leyla writes about politics and civil society in Russia’s regions and national republics.  In her work, she promotes and defends the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation. She now lives in Amsterdam. In this edition of “Then & Now,” we talk to Leyla about the war,...

Our guest today is Zoia Svetova, renowned journalist and human rights activist. She continues to live and work in Moscow.  She is the author of several books, including Priznat’ nevinovnogo vinovnym [To Find the Innocent Guilty]. Her voice is perhaps one of the few authoritative oppositionist voices still heard in Russia today.   This podcast was recorded on 26 March 2024. My questions include: When it became known that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine in 2022, could you ever have imagined...

My guest today is Anastasia Burakova, a human rights lawyer and democratic activist from Russia.  We are still in shock at the news of the murder of Aleksei Navalny in a high-security penal colony in the settlement of Kharp.  Aleksei Navalny’s political star rose as a leader of the opposition to the Putin regime in 2011.  That year, 2011, played a significant part in the  political coming of age of  today’s guest - Anastasia Burakova, a Russian human rights lawyer and activist for democratic...

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  My guest today is Anna Karetnikova. Until recently, Anna Karetnikova lived and worked in Moscow.  In 2016, she was appointed lead analyst to the Federal Penitentiary Service – FSIN. Prior to that, she served for eight years as a member of the Public Oversight Commission (POC) in Moscow and worked closely with the human rights organisation “Memorial”. Anna Karetnikova exemplified that rare...

My guests today are Mamuka Kuparadze, the founder of Studio Re in Tbilisi, which works to advance ‘people’s diplomacy’ through documentary film, and Aleksandr Pichugin, a Russian journalist, originally from Nizhny Novgorod, who left Russia with his family immediately after the announcement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and started a new life in Tbilisi. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the flow of Russian citizens fleeing the war to Georgia has reached an unprecedented...

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  My guest today is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev. Lev Ponomarev trained and worked as a physicist in the USSR before devoting more time and energy to issues of human rights in the Soviet Union and subsequently in the Russian Federation. He was one of the founders of  « Memorial » in 1988, and soon became one of the foremost figures  in human rights in Russia. In the dying days of...

My guest today is Natalya Zyagina, head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International shut down by the Russian authorities in 2022. Natalya Zvyagina has a long record as a Russian human rights activist. She is originally from the city of Voronezh, where she worked for many years in the Interregional Human Rights Group. Natalya has also worked at the Institute for Law and Public Policy, a non-profit organization based in Moscow, and at the Russian branch of Transparency International. This...

My guests today are two Parisians, Aleksandra Ilkhovskaya and Svetlana Dokudovskaya: Aleksandra [known to everyone as “Sanya]” has lived in Paris since she was six years old – her mother emigrated from Russia in 1991. She is married with two daughters. She is a primary school teacher with 10 years’ experience. Svetlana has lived with her French husband and their 13-year-old daughter in Paris for the past 17 years. She works as a cell biologist at the Gustave Roussy Institute, Europe’s largest...

My guest today is the author Maxim Osipov.  Following in the great Russian tradition of Chekhov and Bulgakov, he has pursued a career in medicine in parallel with that of a writer.  For his works of fiction – for the most part short stories that are sharp and witty commentaries on modern-day life in the Russian provinces – Maxim Osipov has won a number of literary prizes, and his plays have been staged as well as broadcast on the radio in Russia. Osipov’s works have been translated into 18...

Welcome to the ninth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  My guest today is Tetyana Sokolova, a professional midwife of 40 years at Mariupol Maternity Hospital No. 2, on the left bank of Mariupol near Azovstal, the industrial plant that became a centre of resistance against the Russian invaders.  On 9 March, the city’s Maternity Hospital No. 3 was bombed by Russian aircraft and the whole world watched with horror pictures of the destroyed...

Welcome to the eighth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.   As a rule,  guests on our podcast are individuals for whom 24th February 2022 was a turning-point in their life; today we are talking about an organisation that came into being as a result of that fateful date. The Reckoning Project was created in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the aim of gathering evidence of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. To this end, The...

Welcome to the seventh episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. In recent weeks, politically motivated trials and lengthy prison terms in Putin’s Russia reached a new peak. Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for treason and Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have been remanded in custody awaiting trial for “justifying terrorism” in connection with the staging of a play. Some say these developments signify a return to...

Welcome to the sixth episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. Whilst our podcast is mostly about people for whom February 24th 2022 was a turning-point in their lives, the subject of today’s conversation is the country, whose leadership caused that date to be so significant in all our lives. We are talking, of course, about Russia. To lead us to an understanding of just how fateful a date 24th February 2022 may be for Russia itself, we talked to...

Welcome to the fifth episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  With me today is Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who shocked the world with her anti-war protest on 14 March 2022, which went live on Russian State TV’s prime time news programme “Vremya”. Since that moment, she has been through such a rollercoaster of adventures –  fleeing Russia with her daughter, work as a journalist in Germany, and now her recent relocation to Paris. Her...

Our latest guest is the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov. Andrei Kurkov became widely known to readers around the world in 2001 when his novel Smert’ postoronnego [Смерть Постороннего] was published in English translation as Death and the Penguin. Other novels followed and, in their wake, worldwide recognition and success at prominent international literary awards. His latest novel, Grey Bees, tells the story of an elderly beekeeper in the occupied territory of Donbas. The novel touches on the...

Welcome to the third episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.   After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. Today’s guest is Lev Gudkov, a sociologist and director of the analytical Levada Centre, Russia’s leading...

Welcome to the second episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.   After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. Today’s guest is Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina: human rights activist, social activist and chair of the...

Welcome to our new Russian-language podcast, Then & Now, with me, Teresa Cherfas.   After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war. My first guest is Marina Litvinenko, widow of Aleksandr Litvinenko, who perished in London in November 2006. Aleksandr...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Varvara Pakhomenko. Varvara Pakhomenko has been a human rights activist for a very long time. Back in her native Tomsk she was actively involved in human rights activities. Having moved to Moscow, Varvara began working with many human rights activists in the capital, but the geography of her travels remained very wide. Since 2006, Varvara Pakhomenko has worked in conflict zones in the North and South Caucasus: in 2006-2009 at the human rights organization...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Nikolai Kavkazsky. Nikolai Yurievich Kavkazsy is a Russian civil society activist, human rights defender and opposition politician. He is one of the leading Yabloko activists in Moscow. Nikolai Kavkazsky was a defendant in the Bolotnoe case. Politically, he defines himself as a left-wing social democrat, an internationalist, a supporter of LGBT rights and of feminism. He is an advocate of juvenile justice and a humane drug policy. This podcast is in...

Our guest on the podcast this week is the historian Nikita Vasilievich Petrov. Nikita Petrov is deputy chair of the board of the Memorial Research and Information Centre (which is based in St. Petersburg). Born in Kiev, Nikita Petrov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering and went on to study at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. His association with the Memorial Society began in 1988. As a historian Nikita Petrov has specialized in the history of the Soviet...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev (pictured, left, with the late Andrei Babushkin). Lev Ponomarev is a human rights activist and head of the For Human Rights movement and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He also participated in the creation of the Memorial Human Rights Center. As a legal entity, the For Human Rights Movement was liquidated by a November 2019 decision of the Russian Supreme Court. Lev Ponomarev became one of the first private individuals...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Andrei Kalikh, a human rights researcher, journalist, and activist with a special interest in the issue of corruption. In the past, Andrei worked as programme director at the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights and he has been a board member of Perm Memorial Society. Until recently, Andrei lived in St. Petersburg. He recently left Russia and is currently in Israel. This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on...

Our guest on the podcast this week is the lawyer Kirill Koroteev, head of international legal practice of Agora International Human Rights Group. Previously, Kirill worked as legal director at Memorial Human Rights Centre, where he specialized in handling cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Kirill graduated from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and received his master's degree from the University of Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he also taught public law. The...